What is Love? (Baby don’t hurt me…)

It feels like…it feels just like falling asleep. One minute you’re in your bed, thinking happy thoughts and looking forward to the next day and everything is alright, it’s alright. But then your mind starts to wander, winding into the deeper mazes of your mind. And you kind of go deeper and deeper and then you’re asleep. It sneaks up on you, gradual, but the next thing you know, you’re trapped in a nightmare and there’s a monster, you know, right there. Right there, breathing down your neck but you can’t see it so you hope it’s just an illusion. You try to ignore it but it gets too strong, gets too strong. You start to panic and you feel like, escape. Run, escape get out of here. You panic and then bam! You sit bolt upright in your bed and look around and see there’s nothing here. Nothing, you’re safe. But you still feel like…you cast your eyes around looking for the danger, looking for a way to escape. But there’s nothing. Nothing, even though you KNOW there should be. And that’s…that’s what it’s like.

That’s love?

Yeah, that’s love.

(Pause)

Come on. That’s not love.

Hey man, I never said it was. That’s just how it feels like. To me, you know. Like thinking about it and stuff. I don’t know ‘bout anybody else you know.

Like, all light and stuff. Like floating on air or whatever. I suppose it’s got to feel good you know. Like being happy all the time. Cause of the magic of love or whatever. (Pause) The way I see it, it’s like when you meet the right person and then they are really really…good in some…way I dunno. And then it just works, you know. Shit, I don’t have to explain it. It’s magic.

Hah, no man. You got it confused. That ain’t love, that’s just really good fiction.

And what, your thing is?

My thing is honest at least. I felt it. I didn’t see it on screen or read about it in a book. I was there man. That’s how I feel like when I read about love or think about love or get someone to explain love.

That’s weird bro.

Bro, don’t judge. (Pause) The way I figure it, that shit is like Bigfoot. Like when we were young and there were still rumours of its existence. But then, everybody and their uncle said they seen it and got it at home, but that was all just, like a bear or something. Or, like, a guy dressed up as Bigfoot and it’s a lie. And more and more people started coming forward with their own Bigfoot and it never turned out to be the real thing and they fucking figured it out in like a month, so it can’t have been that convincing in the first place. So you got all jaded and stopped believing in Bigfoot. And a good thing too. Look at the divorce statistics bro.

We’ve all heard about the divorce statistics. Just cause half of the Bigfoots aren’t Bigfoots, doesn’t mean the other half ain’t.

That’s exactly what it means. If all the Bigfoots that show up aren’t Bigfoots, then that means it’s a whole different creature we’re looking at.

Can’t it mean we’re looking at Bigfoots? Cause like, wait, let me finish. Think about it. If half the Bigfoots aren’t Bigfoots that means whatever it is we think is a Bigfoot actually looks a lot like something else, that’s not a Bigfoot. So that means half are actually Bigfoots and the other half are similar but different Bigfoot creatures.

Yeah, but which half? It could be that one side is the Bigfoot of love and the illusion holds up until you start looking really closely or the costume starts falling apart with time and then you realize it never was. And that’s your version of love, the airy bullshit. It doesn’t exist, it’s a lie. But the other side is the Bigfoot creature. You know it’s not Bigfoot from the start and that’s the real love.

Man, that doesn’t make any sense.

Hey, I’m not saying love doesn’t exist, I’m just saying it doesn’t exist in like, a gaseous form of light and air and good vibrations. Man, my thing is like when I think about that gaseous love and get freaked out cause it’s suffocating you know.

How so?

I dunno. Cause it demands perfection I guess. Like, it gets all up in your face and starts reaching down all the way inside of you to get to all the stuff that’s not that great but it’s cool cause that’s who you are. But it wants to change you. And not in silly stuff like how you look or what music you listen too or the books you read. That’s fine, you pick up new interests that way. But then…it gets all…

(Pause)

It wants to change who you are. It tells you that you aren’t good enough the way you are. You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that. You don’t look enough like Bigfoot.

That isn’t Bigfoot, that’s a Bigfoot costume or whatever. Like you said. You’re confusing it.

No you are. And the rest and all that. Love don’t exist as a gas. It exists as a solid and you can feel it and you can touch it and it’s there. Always and forever.

That’s a lie. Look at the divorce statistics.

That’s just Bigfoot followers, trying to catch the gaseous love and trying to ignore the fact that it’s a fake. It ain’t real. You either love truth and truth never changes, or you say fuck it and try to live in a dream world forever. Love a person exactly as they are or love unrequited. That’s the long and short of it. I’m not saying its not hard.

It’s impossible and you know it. Those feelings exist to make you blind to the truth. You can’t love the truth, it’s unloveable. It’s hard and cold. Death

Find a truth you can love. That’s all it is. Don’t fight a person all the way upstream, trying to make a perfect Bigfoot. Love the imperfect, unconvincing, Bigfoot creature.

(Pause)

Or don’t. But I’ll take my days without waking up to “you’re not good enough”.